Suspended San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi finally tells his side of the story

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San Francisco County Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi exited the court room to a throng of reporters after his sentencing at the San Francisco Superior Court in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, March 19, 2012. He was sentenced to one day of jail and three years of probation for falsely imprisoning his wife during an incident where he allegedly bruised her. He read a statement and briefly answered questions before exiting the courthouse. (Laura A. Oda/Staff)

Ross Mirkarimi was swearing. His wife was screaming. Their 2-year-old son, strapped in the back seat of the family’s Dodge minivan, was so upset “you could see the panic,” Mirkarimi said in a radio interview Wednesday, for the first time telling his story of the New Year’s Eve fight that now has him desperately trying to regain his job as San Francisco’s sheriff.

In an hourlong interview with Michael Krasny on KQED’s “Forum” program, Mirkarimi choked back tears as he explained the “nightmare” that started that morning on the family’s way to lunch at a local pizza parlor. The short trip led to a bruised arm, domestic violence charges, a plea deal, a sentencing and a suspension from his job by Mayor Ed Lee.

“I thought I was more tender, more caring, not as gruff or abrasive, not as testosterone-packed,” the 50-year-old Mirkarimi said.

As much as Mirkarimi was appealing for public sympathy during the interview, he was also trying to make a case to save his job — a post he won in November and was sworn into a week after the fight. But San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and other officials quickly challenged Mirkarimi’s version of events.

Mirkarimi, however, insisted Wednesday that the prosecution and his suspension have been “an orchestration.”

“Do I think politics is involved?” he said in the interview. “You can’t deny it.”

Mirkarimi broke his silence two days before Friday’s Superior Court hearing in which he will fight his suspension on the grounds that he hadn’t taken office yet when the incident occurred. On Monday, he faces a city Ethics Committee hearing, which could lead to a Board of Supervisors’ decision to terminate him.

“I don’t think he has a prayer before the Ethics Committee or the Board of Supervisors” because the domestic violence issue is so radioactive, said Peter Keane, dean emeritus of Golden Gate University Law School. “The supervisors don’t want to get tarred with that.”

Keane added that he didn’t think the radio interview would “make any difference.”

Mirkarimi told Krasny it’s a “story that has been eating at me for nearly four months that I haven’t been able to tell.” He said he offered to tell Lee, who instead gave him an ultimatum to resign or face suspension last month.

“My silence has allowed this story to be narrated by a lot of innuendo and rumor and distortion,” said Mirkarimi, whose lawyer had advised him to keep quiet.

In particular, he denied that he said early in the case that the incident was a “private matter, a family matter,” a quote that led an anti-domestic violence group to rent a billboard with the words, “Domestic Violence is NEVER a private matter.”

He also said the charge he pleaded guilty to — a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment — stemmed from what happened in the minivan. Contrary to previous reports, he said he never “sequestered” his wife in their home.

Mirkarimi said that he and his wife, former Venezuelan soap star Eliana Lopez, were on their way to Pizzeria Delfina at California and Fillmore streets with their son, Theo, in the back seat about 11:45 a.m. Dec. 31 when “a somewhat familiar subject” came up — her plans to take Theo to visit her family in Caracas for an extended stay. Six months earlier, the mother and son had taken a similar trip for two months, he said.

“That was excruciating to be apart from my family, and we had agreed that there would be a plan” because Lopez didn’t have her green card at the time, and “there had been some immigration issues,” he said.

News reports had said Mirkarimi told his wife he was a “powerful man” and couldn’t take their son away. But Mirkarimi insisted Wednesday that he had simply been arguing his parental rights and “how strong our laws are in California.”

The fight escalated from there, he said. He turned the minivan around against his wife’s wishes because “I didn’t want us to be arguing in public” when they arrived at the pizza parlor.

As he parked the minivan at their blue Victorian home, “I swore at my wife in front of my son. I was angry that she wasn’t hearing me and I regret this terribly, but she was also extremely upset to a point where I had never seen her so agitated before.”

As she was getting out of the passenger seat to unharness their son, “she was screaming and I reached over from the driver’s seat — still with my seat belt on — to put my hand underneath her arm to try to guide her back into the passenger seat so we could just de-escalate this and talk this through.”

That’s when he bruised his wife’s arm, he said.

“I was trying to remedy the situation” and have everyone calm down, he said. Instead, his wife went inside and locked the door. She then opened it for him.

And that, he said, was the extent of the 15 minutes of strife that led to his arrest and ultimate conviction on a misdemeanor count of falsely imprisoning his wife. Turning the car around, he said, “was the basis for the plea on false imprisonment.”

During a news conference the day Mirkarimi was sentenced last month, however, Gascon had explained the false-imprisonment charge by saying Lopez “was not free to leave her home and the facts supported that.”

After listening to the KQED interview, Gascon issued a statement suggesting that Mirkarimi’s account was far milder than the story recounted from a neighbor, Ivory Madison, who videotaped Lopez’s tearful account of the fight the next day. “The evidence was overwhelming and presumably led to his guilty plea,” Gascon said. “His failure to take responsibility for what really happened is both disturbing and telling.”

Mirkarimi reiterated his contention, formerly expressed by his attorneys and allies, that Lee was out of line in filing official misconduct charges against him and suspending him without pay. “I think it would’ve been more prudent and professional if Ed Lee had taken me up on my offer to hear my side of the story.”

Christine Falvey, Lee’s spokeswoman, said Wednesday that the mayor “filed the charges based on the facts and after a careful review of his obligations under the City Charter and the evidence.”

Paula Canny, Lopez’s attorney, said that her client is upset that Lee didn’t consult her at all before moving to fire her husband. “She said repeatedly she didn’t believe any of this was worthy of criminal prosecution, and she certainly believed this is a great injustice to remove her husband from office summarily and without due process.”

Mirkarimi said Wednesday that he discovered the approaching storm when he saw his wife running in a panic down Grove Street, days after their quarrel, to explain that their neighbor had called police without consulting her.

Mirkarimi and Lopez, who is now in Venezuela with her son, are still subject to a “stay away” order and are banned from communicating.